Friday, July 30, 2010

OK, it's actually a little more complicated than that. First of all, it wasn't Star Wars per se, it was actually the prequel trilogy. (Wouldn't you know it?) And it wasn't the prequel trilogy per se either, it was Star Wars fans talking about the prequel trilogy. And it wasn't my faith in God per se, it was my faith in apologetics. But losing my faith in apologetics was a big step towards losing my faith in God.

As I've mentioned before, I was engaged in apologetics on the internet for awhile. For about five years, from 2000 to 2005, I went at it 'most every day on internet forums. I knew the arguments backwards and forwards; I used the ones that I thought worked, tweaked some of the weaker ones to make them a little stronger, and came up with a few of my own too.

I wasn't trying to convince or convert anyone though. It's just that with the internet, there was so much information available. It was easy to discover that the "official story" -- the orthodox story -- was sometimes not true, at least not true in a simple, straightforward way. But maybe lot of things were true -- maybe -- "from a certain point of view," as a wise man once said.

To me, apologetics was a way of trying to get at that "certain point of view." Essentially, it was just a matter of trying to create enough intellectual space for belief. Once that room was created, then belief, through "the Spirit" or whatever could, possibly, take root and flourish. That's how it was working for me.

So that was an important part of my life and faith for five years or more. But Mormon forums weren't the only ones I frequented on the internet. Among the others was a certain Star Wars forum. I was less active there, visiting only a couple of times a week and not posting every time I visited.

Anyway, after the last of the prequel movies, Revenge of the Sith, came out, some of the regulars on that forum engaged in a conversation that I found quite bizarre. They attempted to reconcile all the contradictions between the original trilogy and the prequels.

A couple of examples I can remember off the top of my head are Leia saying to Obi-Wan (in the tape she hid in R2-D2) in A New Hope that he had "served her father in the Clone Wars" when her foster father was just one of thousands of senators (and her secret biological father was Obi-Wan's apprentice), and Leia telling Luke in Return of the Jedi that she had a few vague memories of her mother even though Padmé died just after giving birth to them.

And these people on the forums were saying things like "The Jedi were working against the Chancellor on the side of the Galactic Senate, so in that sense they were serving the Senate, and Leia's father was a senator..." and "Maybe Leia had Force memories of her mother, like the Force gave her those memories even though she was too young to remember in the ordinary way."

Those explanations make a certain kind of sense, but on another level, they are, of course, silly. The real reason Leia said those things is because George Lucas doesn't have a fanboy's dedication to "canon," so he just made stuff up as he went along. Obi-Wan had "served Leia's father" because in the first movie, Lucas hadn't thought through the politics yet, and Leia was a princess and Obi-Wan was a Jedi knight. Who is the father of a princess? A king. Who does a knight serve? A king. As originally conceived, Obi-wan the knight had served Princess Leia's father, a king. Q.E.D. Later, Lucas simply changed everything, as is his right.

And I don't think "Force memory" is even a canon "Force power." It's just something somebody on a forum pulled out of their butt to try to make sense of a change in the story. Lucas changed the story because he decided it was better for Padmé to die in childbirth (of a broken heart, FFS -- let's all pause here for a collective eye roll) than to live for three or four years afterward.

So I was both amused and bemused by their efforts at reconciling the trilogies, by their rather desperate reaches for consistency in the series. I couldn't see the point when there was such a simple, obvious explanation in every case. And I decided to tell the perpetrators so. I started writing a post telling them they were nucking futs.

I was going to tell them that they were taking a bunch of fictional BS and treating it as if it were real, and the reason there were so many contradictions was because it was made up as it went along, and there were simple, easy explanations for everything they were twisting and turning and wrenching to fit into a preconceived narrative, and only a fool could believe any of the things they were saying when the obvious answer (IT'S A MADE-UP STORY!) is staring them in the face, and the whole endeavor is pointless and stupid, and -- Oh. Shit.

I've been a part of these sorts of discussions regarding Star Trek. Trek is even more elaborate and complex, with tons of inconsistencies to explain away!

But it was my impression that most of the "apologists" were just having fun, and grasped that the real reason why there were so many inconsistencies is because the people writing it don't care as much as the fans do about making everything consistent. ;)

Also, maybe Leia was mistaken. Maybe she had a nurse or aunt she was really close as a very small child, and -- since her adopted dad didn't like to talk about her mom -- she didn't realize that that wasn't her mom (and that, in fact, her mom had died earlier than that).

Oh, and he was secretly king-in-exile (from some bloodline that had been deposed by the republic a few generations earlier), and he was secretly commanding the Jedi forces during the Clone Wars. But only people in the inner circle -- like Leia and Obi Wan -- knew about it!

Yeah, while I was writing the post, I realized that I had taken what they were doing way too literally. Of course, they didn't actually believe the stuff they were making up; they were just having fun. I doubt that realizing that at the time would have lessened the shock of recognition, though.

Oh, and one of the "apologists" also argued that Leia was mistaken, and her memories weren't really of Padmé. :D

Yeah, I see apologetics now as an attempt to understand the world "in-universe." It's basically the same exercise, whether we're talking about the Star Wars universe, the Star Trek universe, the Marvel universe, or the Mormon universe.

I'm a Star Wars apologist, but you are write about these contradictions. There isn't an answer for every contradiction. At the end of the day, George Lucas didn't have the whole story perfectly planned out from the beginning. Things change.

I made a similar connection after I lost my faith. One of my favorite responses to apologists now is to show them how the argument they're using to "prove" that their religion is true can also "prove" that the story of Harry Potter really happened.

Dude, Princess Leia was the daughter of the former Queen of Naboo, Padme Amidala.

Which isn't relevant, since Leia was adopted by the Organas in order to conceal her identity from Vader and the Emperor. If people everywhere in the galaxy are calling her Princess because they know her mother was the former Queen of Naboo, Padme Amidala, then that's a pretty shitty ruse.

Your example only goes to prove the point that Lucas had no idea what he was doing. "Leia was a princess, right? We know her dad was Anakin and he wasn't a king, so her mom must have been a queen! A democractically elected, minor-aged queen! Episode One in the BAG. Wait, what? Oh right, she grew up with an adopted family. Alright forget it. She'll just be a senator or some bullshit. Whatever. Anyway, cha-CHING!"

That was hilarious! I loved the way you drove us into what really happened and how... It was funny and it got me thinking. Brilliant analogy.I specially liked the end. I could almost imagine your thoughts and face while you were "making fun" of them and just realizing you were one of them.Fiction, Religion, all the same.I could totally relate to you on that!

Nick, I really enjoyed your article. It's interesting that you brought up episodes like "Who Mourns for Adonis." Back in my Mormon apologist days, someone told me (with some justification, I think) that the Mormon God as I described him sounded more like a "really smart alien" than a "God."

I love the "oh shit" moment. As I listen to myself talk, and then suddenly realize what I am saying. And then everything changes, unless I stop listening to myself... Which I have found many apologetics do. They just don't listen to what they are saying...

(This is not related to the church, but I just really wanna share it. A friend of mine left an abusive relationship. His daughter said, "Calling mom emotionally abusive is just too harsh. Besides if she was emotionally abusive, you'd have some screwed up children."

Then in the SAME conversation, she went on to talk about how her brother is really awkward and rude to people. And he is just wierd. Then she talked about how she hated how emotionally abusive her sister and brother-in-law are to each other and to their kids. Then she talked about selfish her other sister is. Never thinks about anyone but herself and is always really rude. And this girl, is married a drug addict. He nearly died from a drug overdose, but she really loves him, so she's gonna stay with him.

So, I've come to the conclusion that people just don't pay attention to the words that come out of their mouths...)

So, I just found this. It's awesome. And my husband is a huge SW fan, so I sent it to him as well.

I think most people, if they go and study other religions closely, even if they're looking for flaws, will find exactly the same problems in their own religion. And they'll either recognize that, or they'll ignore it. It's astonishing to listen to Mormons complain about Catholicism, or vice versa. I kind of stand there with my jaw hanging to the floor thinking I must be in some parallel universe or something ...

Thanks Carla. I kind of knew that -- I was pretty used to arguing with fundie Protestants who constantly said things that applied at least equally well to their own beliefs -- but I never realized the absurdity of the whole exercise until I saw it applied to something that was obviously 100 percent fictional.

Dude, what a great awesome analogy. I can give so many reasons for my atheism, but it is difficult to articulate why I am so confident in that particular conclusion. Why, for instance, even though I feel very strongly about issues such as health care, etc., it is not hard to imagine that I could be wrong; whereas when it comes to atheism, I'm not really worried, it just seems plainly obvious. Yeah, this is a great analogy.

One thing that surprised me when I was thinking everything through and trying to weigh the evidence rather than go by feelings was just how one-sided the evidence was. The contest between theism and atheism isn't close at all.

I'm certainly with you on your general point here about religion and atheism, but I'm somewhat more sympathetic to the online retconners you scoffed at than you are. Obviously they had a certain level of commitment to making the Star Wars series into a coherent and whole narrative—and that is extremely difficult indeed. But c'mon: it's not crazy, "nucking futs," or only important or believable to "a fool."

I'm a moderate fan of the original trilogy, and I agree in large part with the (extremely long) negative reviews from Red Letter Media, which concluded that the prequels were simply awful. Hells, yes, there are ridiculous contradictions within the broader saga—but the two you identify seem to me really penny-ante.

Kenobi did serve the Senate, which included Leia's adopted father, in the Clone Wars (which were against the Separatists, not—overtly—the Chancellor). In that context I don't think it's terribly odd for Leia, in Episode IV, to use that phrase: it both communicates respect for Kenobi's service and explains who she is, connecting her to him. I don't see how it's so much of a stretch for her character to use that description.

Then, given our shared focus on religion, I'm not sure why you don't find the obvious explanation for Leia's Episode VI statement worthwhile: she's simply wrong. For many of the same reasons that religious folks believe what they believe, Leia thinks she has memories that she really doesn't. What's the slightest bit implausible about that?

If you want an irreconcilable contradiction in Star Wars, surely you don't have to go beyond 1980 to find the biggest and most blatant one, the very issue that forced Lucas and Kenobi, a few years later, to come up with that ridiculous "different points of view" line you quoted.

Come on:A young Jedi Knight named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Emperor hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father.

Ba-boom: the Great Contradiction.

Lucas simply abandoned what that line actually says less than four years later. ...And then he had to bring Kenobi back in Episode VI in a silly attempt to explain how the above and Vader's "I am your father" can both be true. Obviously, they can't.

That retcon was ridiculous and absurd (and central to the whole series' plot, of course)—though now it's thirty years old. Accepting that but revolting at your interlocutors' explanations for the two issues you list seems to me like straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel.

I didn't necessarily pick the two worst cases, just two I happened to remember. And I don't care that much about most of the contradictions in the movies. I love the first three anyway (and I even like some parts of the second three).

The arguments those fans made weren't silly in the sense of making no sense at all. The point of apologetics, after all, is that arguments have to make a certain amount of sense on some level, and those arguments did. What bothered me about them is that we know what actually happened.

Probably every contradiction in the series comes from the same two sources: Lucas changed the story as he went along and sometimes he simply didn't think things through very well (as Dorkman points out with the whole Queen-Princess thing).

So the whole thing seemed pointless to me. In the real world, we already know why Princess Leia said those things; we don't need to make up reasons that fit inside the story. It doesn't matter if they're more or less plausible; they aren't what actually happened. I would actually have been much more interested in a discussion of why Lucas made the changes and mistakes he made rather than in how we could best pretend they didn't exist.

And then I noticed how closely what they were doing with the Star Wars saga paralleled what I and many others were doing with Mormonism. We were trying to reconcile things inside a story when there were much more plausible explanations in the real world. And that was a shock to me.

Was this forum stardestroyer.net by any chance? Or was it some other small corner of the internet where people actually care about the technical details of Star Wars canon?

I've known Star Wars fans who are the reverse of what you are talking about here: they strive to prove that the Star Wars movies make sense and are consistent with each other, but they have no patience with mental backflips to reconcile the contradictions in the Bible and other scripture. (To be fair, they never actually say the Star Wars stories are true.)

At any rate, thanks for this post -- gave me some things to think about regarding both theism and my Star Wars-obsessed internet acquaintances.

There was a pretty hard-core cult at my college -- the International Church of Christ (sounds normal, right?) -- with whom I spent time arguing about how destructive their recruiting tactics were. They dominate and shame people into "accepting Christ", and it seemed obviously wrong.

But I couldn't come up with a good reason. If they were really saving souls for all eternity, isn't a bit of sternness justified? After all, the person being saved will still have AN ETERNITY OF BLISS even though the initiation was a little rough going, with the alternative being AN ETERNITY OF TORTURE.

I couldn't make a clear distinction between the kinder, gentler Christianity practiced by my family and the militant one practiced by these guys. All the beliefs were basically the same -- the cult was just more serious about actually believing them, and they took their beliefs to their logical conclusion.

When it finally sunk in that the difference was in quantity, not quality, I finally let go of my beliefs.

Yeah, the mean and nasty religious people are usually just following their religions to natural conclusions. And the moderate and nice ones don't go so far not because of gods, but because their own consciences outweigh their scriptures.

Can I just say here that despite being a fan, I don't go on Star Wars forums, but the word that annoyed me the most in any of the movies, cartoons and TV shows was "younglings". The repeated use of this word caused me more distress than when I found out about (and watched as much as I could bear of) the Holiday Special.

Being older than you my introduction to apologetics was in the letters section of the SUPERMAN comics back in the late '50s. Kids would write in with a "gotcha" when they found some discrepency between something in a recent issue and some issue a year or two ago. The editors would always find some way to resolve the discrepency.

It's a sign of the times that this attitude toward escapist fiction has, in later generations, become the obsession of a large portion of the adult population.

I'm quite impressed by your article and it might look too simple to compare God's stories or the Bible to Star Wars, but it makes sense. At the end Gods and Religion discussions are pointless arguments about a subject nobody can probe and everybody says they have the one and only true. Trying to explain the inconsistences in star wars is exactly as pointles as trying to explain the contradictions in the Bible and the only difference is that while nobody believes that never actually existed a Princess Leia or a Sith brotherhood or whatever, many people are convinced that the Bible stories as real facts even though the same stories about an universal flood and angels living amongst men etc were told centuries before the bible was even conceibed. The difference between star wars and the bible is just faith. It is at the same time useless and trascendent. But your logic is a wonderful example of how dogmatic concepts are so easily thorn appart when you start just THINKING. I still think there is something higher than us, but i really dont think that we are just legos in the game of a sick, cruel, spoiled and bipolar god (which is the bible's description of god).

Sorry to add something tangential to such an old post, but I was just thinking about this the other day, since my kids have taken a strong interest in Star Wars recently.

I remember -- way back when Return of the Jedi first came out -- thinking that Leia's claim of remembering her biological mother didn't make any sense.

It's bad enough that they "hid" Luke by having him be raised as "nephew" by Vader's brother or sister on Vader's home planet. But he's sufficiently estranged from his family and his family is sufficiently obscure that one can believe that nobody in the galaxy would tip off Vader to Luke's existence.

However, if Leia was raised by her biological mother until the age of maybe four...? The only way that would work would be if her mother went into hiding as well. So she goes and marries the king of Alderan? Yeah, that's a great hiding place. Vader would never suspect the existence of his super-secret daughter if she's being raised as princess of Alderan by his ex, who's (assumedly) serving as queen...

Well, the whole thing was made up and changed as Lucas went along, so some pieces just don't fit that well. Luke and Leia obviously weren't siblings in the first movie. Leia's parents were a hereditary king and queen, not a Jedi and a former democratically-elected underage queen. Darth Vader really did kill Luke's father. Oh, and "Darth" was Mr. Vader's first name, not a traditional Sith title.

That's not to say that many of the changes (especially turning it into a family saga) weren't big improvements. But they were changes. And like I said, I find it more interesting to discuss why the changes were made than to try to find ways to pretend they didn't happen. (And I suppose I approach Mormonism in a similar way now: I'm interested in how it came to be what it is, not in trying to show how it can be "true.")

My husband and I recently left the church. Through the whole journey, we have had a lot of joking about Jedis, the dark side, and all things Star Wars. I was very glad to find your blog post tonight. We laughed so hard. Thanks for supplementing our exit with such a great perspective!

I'm not sure that anyone here has really read or understood the "scriptures". If they had, then the comment "They follow their beliefs to a natural conclusion." wouldn't have been made.

I defy you to show me a place in the Bible that says we should be militant in recruiting people into the faith. In fact, I defy you to show me any place in the bible that says we need to recruit anybody. It says "Go therefore and make disciples of every nation", and for those who don't really read for understanding, that does not mean "go therefore and make every nation a disciple" it means, go seek them. Find out whoever they are (or will be) and make them a disciple of Christ. That understanding carries the weight that not everybody is going to be a disciple. Therefore, my "logical conclusion" as a believer is that I don't have to worry so much. If I truly believed that God was all powerful, then I should take comfort in the fact that I know he doesn't "need" me. If he really wanted recruits, he could do it himself, better and faster.

People are in love with power, and religion often becomes a giant power struggle for some dumb reason. Christianity calls us to cast off our old selves; the selves that crave power and things of this world.

Ephesians 4:22 - "You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires;"

I'm not apologizing for the bible here, because using a quote to make the bible seem true is circular logic. But that brings me to my other point. Using logic to try and support something that obviously outside of logic is pretty stupid. I realize that it's kind of the way our culture has developed, but that's a very western heavy mindset. Similar to the way the British thought when they conquered a big chunk of the world under an assumption we know as "manifest destiny". Read some Native American literature and tell me if their system of beliefs or way of life seemed "logical".

My "natural conclusion" here is that you would say it wasn't, and in which case you would be inadvertently supporting a slow genocide because of your belief that "logic" is the king of everything.

One thing that I've noticed about atheists is that their reasons for not believing are scattered and completely different.

In all of my travels, I've never seen one atheist say to another atheist "Hey man, atheism is the way... but I think you should rethink your reason for being atheist. That wasn't very logical".

Which is exactly what Kuri should have said to Axiom.

As I've explained earlier, that's not God's fault, that's that fault of people's misinterpretations of written word. And last time I checked, that wasn't go out and change your life worthy... unless we're going to begin not speaking because someone misinterpreted a theme in "Catcher in the Rye" during English Class.

This Star Wars thing is stupid. I fail to see the connection, and one might argue the reality of your Mormonism (which is a crazy faith in itself, that deserves more examination) wasn't as strong as you make it out to be.

You haven't provided any "evidence" that is so stacked against God existing, and you can't. There is just as much evidence on either side of the field, and it all comes down to how you feel in your heart.

All that being said, I harbor no hate for anyone here, and in fact I love you, and I care for you, and I wish you the best. I would take a bullet for anyone here because I think everyone deserves the right to life and the opportunity to discover who they are and ponder existence. In many ways, I respect a good atheist opinion more than a ridiculous Christian opinion; but they are my brothers and sisters and I feel a need to defend them a little against what I perceive to be ignorance.

It's probably useless to respond to me, because I am not coming back to check. Not out of fear, but because I got here by StumbleUpon.

Although the strangest thing one might say about my commentary is that it uses the very thing it denounces. Hypocritical? Yes, maybe a little bit. But I think we all are.

P.S. I thought this was a great post, by the way. For my ‘taste’ or current convictions, though, based upon some experiences I’ve had, I would have liked it better (or it would have been more accurate from my stance) had the title been ‘How I Lost My Faith (or belief) in Mormonism.

Well, I didn't see much point in answering that guy, because if he isn't interested in actually having a conversation, why bother? Plus, I thought his arguments were too trite and easily rebutted to be worth answering in detail in the first place.

As for the title, my personal story is specific to Mormonism, but people who belong(ed) to other faiths have also told me that it resonates with them as well. And while it didn't instantly destroy my belief in God or even in Mormonism, it did deeply undermine my belief in both.

Star Wars is a MOVIE / We live in reality. Why do people look for reality in a devised fantasy. It would be better if there were no movies so those who are easily influenced by imagination were able to use their own perception; the same people who might find God an imagined being. I find that most of those people have no problem believing in the "Devil", but do have a hard time with God. I plan to move on and ask God's help with my life here and in the next world.